Towards Superior Transmission Performance in Submarine Systems: Leveraging UltraLow Attenuation and Large Effective Area

This paper expands our previous work on record-low attenuation of 0.1460 dB/km, measured on a silica-core fiber with 148 mu m(2) effective area. We describe the technology used to achieve such low level of attenuation and quantify other span loss characteristics, such as maintaining ultralow attenuation after cabling and splice loss reduction using ``bridge{''} fiber and tapering techniques. We also show that a superior transmission performance in submarine networks is achieved using a combination of ultralow attenuation and large effective area, and discuss the impact of span length on system performance. We finally demonstrate that the reduction in fiber attenuation provides an additional benefit of lower optimum power into the fiber, therefore, relaxing the maximum output power requirements of submarine EDFAs.